Emerald golf course to close this summer for renovations

Jack Ptrichko putts for the hole while Jack Thornton holds the flag at the Emerald Golf Club. The club will close the golf course for eight weeks this summer to replace the greens.

Bill Hand/Sun Journal

By Eddie Fitzgerald, Sun Journal Staff

Published: Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 03:37 PM.

Golfers at the Emerald Golf Club will have to take a break from the fairways for about eight weeks this summer to make way for renovations.

Jerry Briele, director of golf at the Emerald, said the golf course would close July 5 and would remain closed until maybe the end of August while workers replace the Penncross Bentgrass on the 18 greens with champion hybrid Bermuda grass.

“The greens are 25 years old and it is time to renovate,” Briele said.

The Bermuda grass will hold up better in the warmer weather conditions of summer. The Bentgrass it is replacing was better suited for spring and fall weather conditions, Briele said.

Workers are now in the process of removing about 2,000 trees near the greens to prepare for the new greens, he said.

“The Bermuda grass requires sunshine,” Briele said. “It doesn’t grow well in the shade. The trees, in 25 years, have gotten a lot bigger than when we opened.”

While the Emerald is closed, the club plans to arrange rounds of golf for its members at other golf courses in the area, Briele said.

Golfers at the Emerald Golf Club will have to take a break from the fairways for about eight weeks this summer to make way for renovations.

Jerry Briele, director of golf at the Emerald, said the golf course would close July 5 and would remain closed until maybe the end of August while workers replace the Penncross Bentgrass on the 18 greens with champion hybrid Bermuda grass.

“The greens are 25 years old and it is time to renovate,” Briele said.

The Bermuda grass will hold up better in the warmer weather conditions of summer. The Bentgrass it is replacing was better suited for spring and fall weather conditions, Briele said.

Workers are now in the process of removing about 2,000 trees near the greens to prepare for the new greens, he said.

“The Bermuda grass requires sunshine,” Briele said. “It doesn’t grow well in the shade. The trees, in 25 years, have gotten a lot bigger than when we opened.”

While the Emerald is closed, the club plans to arrange rounds of golf for its members at other golf courses in the area, Briele said.

“Several (clubs) have already reached out since they learned we were renovating the greens,” he said.

All of the other facilities at the Emerald, from the clubhouse to the tennis courts and driving range, will remain open during the renovation, Briele said.

It is uncertain exactly when the course will reopen. That will depend on how quick the new Bermuda greens grow, he said.

Marilyn Vogelien of New Bern, who golfs at the Emerald three or four times a week and once a week with the Emerald Ladies Golf Association, said she had mixed feelings about the course closing.

“Everybody is, I think, fifty/fifty,” she said. “We know we need the greens done and we are anxious to have them done — it’s going to be a good thing,” she said. “Some people travel in the summer. With the heat, they head north. I think before we know it, the two months will be up and we will be back to golfing and have brand new greens and we’ll be on top of it.”

The 18-hole golf course at the Emerald Golf Club features 6,924 yards of golf from the longest tees for a par of 72. It was designed by Rees Jones, a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, and opened in 1988.

Eddie Fitzgerald can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at eddie.fitzgerald@newbernsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @staffwriter3.